Dawn found me among the dead.
The camp was quiet now — only the hiss of dying embers, the stink of blood thick enough to choke the air. The forest had stopped breathing. Even the crows stayed away.
I stood in the center of it, bare-chested, skin painted crimson. My shadow stretched long across the ground, darker than it should have been, like the night itself refused to leave me.
Every heartbeat I heard wasn't mine. It came from the ground — echoes of the ones I'd stolen.
My throat ached, but not from regret. From thirst. Always thirst.
I'd drunk too deep last night and still it wasn't enough. No amount of blood filled the emptiness that kept crawling up my spine.
I'd told myself it was hunger. Now I knew better. It was absence.
Aria's.
I could still feel her sometimes — faint tremors in the bond, like breathing through smoke. Pain. Determination. Her name beating in my skull like a curse.
I wanted to find her. I wanted to forget her. I didn't know which would kill me faster.
The wind shifted. The scent of metal, of magic, crept between the trees.
Not prey. Predators.
I turned slowly, every sense sharpening. They were near — five, maybe six. Moving like ghosts, too quiet to be mortal.
When they appeared, they did not hide.
Black armor, silver insignias etched like veins of light. Eyes the color of moonfire. Nightwalkers, but not Marcus's breed. Their steps were disciplined, almost reverent.
At their center walked a woman.
She was taller than the rest, draped in silk the color of bloodied ivory. Her hair was white, but not with age; it shimmered like frost. Her gaze met mine, steady and unreadable, and for a moment the forest seemed to bow to her.
Seraphina.
I didn't need her name spoken to know it. I'd heard whispers of her in Marcus's court — the rival matriarch, the heretic queen, the one whose blood could command storms.
And she'd found me.
The soldiers fanned out around the clearing. None raised a weapon.
Seraphina stepped closer, heels sinking into the blood-wet soil. "So," she said softly, voice like wind through glass. "This is what Marcus lost."
Her gaze slid over the carnage, the drained bodies, the ruin of my hands. I almost expected disgust. Instead, she smiled.
"I can smell her on you," she said. "The shadow-wielder. The one who defied him."
My jaw clenched. "Where is she?"
"Alive. For now." Seraphina tilted her head, studying me as if I were some wild animal caught between pity and fascination. "But this isn't about her, is it? This is about you."
I didn't answer.
She stepped closer until she was only a breath away. Her eyes gleamed. "Tell me, boy — when you killed them, did it hurt?"
I stiffened. "They attacked first."
Her smile deepened. "That wasn't what I asked."
I didn't answer.
Because the truth was yes. It had hurt. It had felt like burning alive and drowning at once — a fever I couldn't escape.
And somewhere inside that pain, I'd felt good.
She saw it on my face and laughed softly, the sound like a blade sliding free of its sheath. "There it is. Honesty."
She gestured once. One of her soldiers tossed something toward me — a human corpse, throat still bleeding.
"Feed," she said simply.
I stared at her, fury twisting my gut. "I'm not your pet."
"No," she agreed. "You're a weapon that doesn't yet know its edge. Marcus will come for you when he learns you live. And when he does, you'll need to decide whose leash you wear."
"I wear no leash."
Her expression softened into something like pity. "Everyone does, eventually. Even the gods."
The scent of the blood was unbearable. The body's pulse was fading, but still there — faint, like a drum at the edge of hearing. My hunger clawed at my chest.
Seraphina watched with perfect calm. "Feed, and live. Refuse, and die. I'll call this mercy either way."
For a long moment, I didn't move. The sky above was gray, the forest silent, the blood on my skin already drying to rust.
Then instinct won.
I dropped to my knees. My teeth found the throat. The taste hit like fire.
When I looked up again, Seraphina's smile had widened.
"Good," she murmured. "Very good."
She knelt beside me, wiped a smear of blood from my mouth with her thumb, and whispered: "Welcome home, little monster."
...
They didn't chain me.
They didn't need to.
Seraphina's citadel rose in the mountains, carved from obsidian and bone. It felt alive — the walls pulsing faintly as if with breath. Her soldiers moved through the corridors like shades, wordless, disciplined.
They called her the Mother of Blood.
To me, she was something else entirely: the calm after every slaughter, the voice that made the hunger sound holy.
In the days that followed, she taught me control — or her version of it.
I learned how to call the thirst at will, how to taste the air and name what it carried. I learned to still my heart until I vanished from mortal senses. To strike faster than thought, to feed without frenzy.
Each lesson came with blood.
Some nights it was animal. Some nights, men who'd failed her.
I told myself I killed because I must — that each victim was another wall between Marcus and Aria. But with every feeding, the justification thinned. The pleasure sharpened.
Seraphina watched every time. She never looked away.
"Do you feel guilty?" she asked once, as I wiped blood from my chin.
"Yes."
"Good. Keep it. Guilt sharpens the blade. Lose it, and you become Marcus. Drown in it, and you become nothing."
Her words etched themselves into me.
Under her hand, the hunger changed shape — no longer chaos, but a weapon drawn fine. She called it evolution. I called it surrender.
And yet, I couldn't stop.
Because she was right.
Every kill made the bond to Aria flicker weaker, dimmer. The ache faded. The voices quieted. The shadows that once whispered her name now whispered mine.
At night, Seraphina would come to my chamber — never unannounced, never questioned. She'd stand in the doorway, watching me like an artist studying unfinished work.
"Do you dream?" she asked one night.
"I try not to."
"What do you see when you fail?"
"Her."
She smiled faintly. "Then let her fade. Dreams are ghosts, and you are not the living anymore."
But when she left, I pressed my hands to my face and whispered Aria's name until morning.
...
Weeks passed. Maybe months. Time bled like everything else.
The citadel became a rhythm — train, feed, obey.
Seraphina's faction hunted Marcus's scouts across the borders. I led many of those hunts. Each time, she sent me farther, trusted me more. I became her knife in the dark, the rumor whispered in Marcus's court.
They called me the Pale Beast.
I stopped correcting them.
But every kill carried her scent somewhere behind it — Aria's. The shadows around my victims would twitch just before they fell, as if remembering her touch.
Once, during a raid near the river, I found a torn scrap of cloak — black silk, faintly perfumed with iron and night. Hers.
I pressed it to my face and felt something inside me fracture.
Seraphina found me there, kneeling by the water.
"She still owns you," she said quietly.
"She saved me."
"She cursed you."
I looked up. "Maybe both."
Her gaze softened, almost gentle. "I could free you of her, if you let me."
"How?"
"Blood erases blood." She traced a nail down my throat. "Drink from me instead. Replace her bond with mine."
The hunger rose immediately, furious and eager. Her scent was intoxicating — old, powerful, absolute.
But I hesitated. "And then what would I be?"
Her smile was small, secretive. "Mine."
The word hung between us like a blade.
For a moment, I imagined it — belonging nowhere, to no one, except the creature who had turned my curse into purpose.
Then Aria's heartbeat pulsed once in the bond — faint but real.
I stepped back. "Not yet."
Seraphina's expression didn't change, but the air thickened with displeasure. "You will, eventually. When you've bled enough to forget why you resist."
She turned, her gown whispering across the stones. "Until then, keep killing for me. Let the world learn your name."
...
I killed for her.
I tore through Marcus's borders, through mortal villages that fed his armies. Each battle blurred into another — fire, screams, blood.
The hunger became art.
Seraphina called it devotion. I called it silence.
But sometimes, after the killing stopped, I'd stand amid the smoke and hear her voice — not Seraphina's. Aria's. Whispering through the bond I swore was dying.
She was still out there.
Still coming for me.
And some part of me wanted her to.
Because if she found me now, maybe she'd kill what I'd become before Seraphina finished shaping it.
Or maybe she'd join me.
The thought twisted in my chest like pleasure and pain entwined.
When I returned to the citadel after one such raid, Seraphina was waiting on the throne — the room dim, her eyes glowing faint gold.
"You've done well," she said. "Marcus bleeds because of you."
I knelt. "He won't stop until he has her."
"Nor will you," she murmured. "That's why you're useful."
She rose, descending the steps, and placed her hand against my jaw. Her touch was ice. "Remember, Liam — you were dying when I found you. I gave you purpose. Don't waste it on ghosts."
Her thumb brushed my lips. "But if you do see her again…"
I met her gaze. "What then?"
"Bring me her heart."
The hunger flared, hot and cruel, as if agreeing.
I bowed my head. "Yes, my Lady."
But as she turned away, I pressed a blood-stained hand to my chest, to the place where the bond still throbbed faintly beneath the ruin.
And I swore — quietly, to no one — that if Aria's face ever appeared before me, I wouldn't let Seraphina touch her.
Even if it meant burning the world a second time.